Publication Ethics

Publication Ethics

1. Scope, principles, and responsibilities

AL MANAR: Jurnal Komunikasi dan Pendidikan Islam is a peer-reviewed scholarly journal published by Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Masjid Syuhada Yogyakarta. This statement sets out the ethical responsibilities of authors, editors, reviewers, and the publisher throughout submission, evaluation, publication, and post-publication review. The journal seeks to follow the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) Core Practices and relevant COPE guidance. Reference to COPE does not, by itself, imply COPE membership or endorsement.

Editorial decisions shall be based on scholarly merit, methodological soundness, originality, ethical compliance, and relevance to the journal’s scope. Decisions shall remain independent of advertising, sponsorship, publishing charges, institutional relationships, and other commercial considerations. The publisher supports editorial independence and appropriate records management, investigation, and correction of the scholarly record.

2. Duties of editors and editorial staff

Editors shall evaluate submissions fairly without discrimination on grounds unrelated to scholarly assessment, including race, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, gender, sexual orientation, disability, or political belief. The editor-in-chief or designated handling editor makes publication decisions after appropriate editorial and peer-review assessment, consistent with journal policy and applicable law.

Editors and editorial personnel shall protect the confidentiality of submissions and review materials, sharing information only with authorized individuals for legitimate editorial purposes. Unpublished material or ideas must not be used for personal research or advantage without the author's explicit written consent.

Editors shall disclose and manage actual, potential, or perceived competing interests. An editor with a relevant conflict, including authorship, close collaboration, institutional relationship, or personal or financial interest, shall recuse themselves; an independent editor will oversee the manuscript. Editors shall not manipulate citations, reviews, editorial decisions, or publication metrics. The journal shall maintain appropriate records of editorial decisions and ethical concerns.

3. Duties of peer reviewers

Reviewers shall accept assignments only when they have the requisite expertise, adequate time, and no unmanageable competing interests. They must promptly notify the editor of any inability to review impartially or on time and must not contact authors directly without editorial authorization.

Manuscripts, supplementary materials, and review communications are confidential. Reviewers shall not distribute, upload, or disclose such materials to third parties or external AI systems without explicit permission from the journal and appropriate safeguards. Reviewers shall not use unpublished information for personal benefit.

Reviews must be evidence-based, constructive, respectful, and free from personal criticism. Reviewers should identify relevant omitted literature and alert the editor, confidentially, to possible plagiarism, redundant publication, ethical breaches, image/data irregularities, or peer-review manipulation. Recommendations for additional citations must be scholarly justified, not intended to inflate citation counts. Reviewers must not delegate the review without prior editorial approval.

4. Duties of authors: integrity and reporting

Authors shall submit accurate, original work and give a balanced account of methods, evidence, limitations, and findings. Fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, inappropriate image or data alteration, citation manipulation, and misleading presentation of findings are unacceptable. Research reports should provide sufficient methodological detail to permit critical appraisal and, where practicable, reproducibility.

Authors must appropriately cite prior work, acknowledge reused materials, obtain any required permission, and disclose significant overlap with their own prior publications, preprints, conference papers, theses, or other outputs. Submitting the same manuscript to more than one journal concurrently is prohibited. Substantial redundant publication without transparent disclosure and justification is unacceptable.

Authors should disclose financial support, sponsor roles, and all relevant competing interests. A statement of funding and competing interests must be included even when there is no funding or no conflict to declare. Authors are responsible for verifying the accuracy of citations and all submitted content, including content developed with technical or AI assistance.

5. Authorship, contributorship, and changes to authorship

Authorship must reflect substantial intellectual contributions, participation in drafting or critically revising the manuscript, approval of the final version, and accountability for the integrity of the work. All listed authors must satisfy the journal's stated authorship criteria; contributors who do not qualify should be acknowledged with permission. Guest, gift, and ghost authorship are prohibited.

The corresponding author shall ensure that all authors approve the submission, author order, disclosures, and final manuscript. The journal may request a contributorship statement using the CRediT taxonomy where applicable. Requests to add, remove, or reorder authors after submission require a documented explanation and written agreement from all affected authors. Where authors disagree, editorial processing may be suspended pending resolution by the authors or their institutions; editors should not adjudicate contested factual contributions without evidence. Changes after publication require an appropriately linked notice if approved.

6. Research ethics and protection of participants

Studies involving human participants must comply with applicable ethical standards and institutional requirements. Authors must state the name of the approving research ethics committee, approval identifier where available, or a justified exemption when approval is not required. Informed consent for participation must be obtained when required; consent for publication of identifiable personal information is separate and must be documented as appropriate. Editors may request supporting documentation while safeguarding confidential information.

Research involving children, students, dependent relationships, or other potentially vulnerable populations requires particular attention to voluntariness, power imbalances, privacy, and appropriate consent/assent procedures. Sensitive personal data must be lawfully collected, securely stored, and reported in a manner that reduces re-identification risks. Research involving animals, hazardous procedures, or culturally sensitive material must follow relevant legal and disciplinary standards. Ethical approval does not remove editors' responsibility to consider ethical concerns raised by the reported research.

7. Data availability, transparency, and reproducibility

Authors shall preserve underlying materials, data, protocols, and analytic records for a reasonable period consistent with institutional requirements, applicable law, participant consent, and disciplinary norms. Authors must be able to provide relevant evidence confidentially for editorial evaluation when reasonably requested.

Each research article should include a data availability statement identifying whether supporting data are publicly accessible, available on reasonable request, or restricted, together with a brief reason for restrictions. Open sharing is encouraged where lawful and ethically appropriate but must never override privacy, consent, confidentiality, or legal obligations. Where relevant, authors are encouraged to use recognized reporting guidelines, preregistration, and transparent descriptions of deviations from registered protocols.

8. Peer review and editorial decision process

The journal will publish, on a dedicated and accessible website page, the peer-review model actually used, initial screening criteria, selection and independence of reviewers, typical stages of review, possible editorial decisions, and procedures for handling revised submissions, reviewer conflicts, disagreements, and appeals. Reviewers' identities and review reports will be protected or disclosed according to the stated review model.

Editors shall assess review quality and possible manipulation; reviewers or editorial board members must not be permitted to influence decisions on manuscripts in which they have conflicts. Editorial decisions remain the responsibility of the editor and are not determined mechanically by numerical scores, similarity percentages, citation counts, or AI-generated recommendations.

9. Complaints and editorial appeals

Authors, reviewers, readers, and other stakeholders may submit documented complaints concerning editorial conduct, procedural irregularities, peer review, discrimination, potential conflicts, or other publication-ethics issues through the contact channel published by the journal. Complaints should identify the article or submission, explain the concern, and provide any available supporting evidence.

The editor-in-chief, or an independent designated editor when the complaint concerns the editor-in-chief, shall acknowledge the complaint, examine records, request responses where appropriate, and communicate a reasoned outcome without unnecessary disclosure of confidential materials. Complainants and respondents must be treated fairly, and retaliation is prohibited. Where a concern concerns the publisher or requires independent oversight, it shall be referred to an appropriate authority independent of the subject of the complaint.

Authors may appeal an editorial decision by identifying a material procedural error, demonstrable conflict, or substantive misunderstanding of the manuscript, rather than merely disagreeing with unfavorable reviews. An editor who did not make the original decision should consider the appeal where practicable. An appeal does not guarantee acceptance or another round of review. The journal will publish its designated contact and target response intervals separately and apply them consistently.

10. Allegations of research and publication misconduct

The journal takes seriously credible concerns raised before or after publication, including confidential or anonymous reports, when enough evidence is supplied to assess them. Allegations may concern authors, editors, reviewers, or the publisher. Examples include fabrication, falsification, plagiarism, unauthorized use of data, unethical research, citation manipulation, compromised peer review, undisclosed major competing interests, and inappropriate duplicate publication.

The editor shall document and make a preliminary assessment of the concern, protect confidentiality, screen for competing interests, and give affected parties a fair opportunity to respond. Editors may consult experts, other journals, the publisher, research integrity officers, or relevant institutions as appropriate. The journal evaluates the reliability of the published record; institutions ordinarily investigate misconduct by researchers. A decision should not depend solely on an author's refusal to cooperate, an automated similarity score, or an untested allegation.

A submission may be rejected or editorial assessment suspended where justified. For published articles, the journal may issue a correction, expression of concern, or retraction according to the evidence and COPE guidance. Unsubstantiated allegations shall not be presented as proven misconduct. The journal will maintain a documented record of actions and communicate outcomes as far as confidentiality and legal constraints allow.

11. Corrections, expressions of concern, retractions, and post-publication discussion

Readers and researchers may submit evidence-based comments or concerns about published articles through the journal's published contact channel. Substantive scholarly discussion may be considered for publication as correspondence or another clearly identified moderated format, subject to editorial standards and applicable law.

A correction may be issued when a material error can be transparently amended without rendering the main findings unreliable. An expression of concern may be considered where serious questions about reliability or ethical compliance remain unresolved and readers should be alerted while inquiries continue. Retraction may be warranted when findings are unreliable, research was unethical, substantial plagiarism or unauthorized use occurred, the article is seriously redundant, or peer review was manipulated, among other grounds covered by COPE guidance. Retraction is a mechanism to correct the literature, not a punishment.

Notices shall be promptly published, freely accessible, dated, distinguishable from ordinary articles, objectively worded, and linked bidirectionally to the affected publication where technically feasible. They should identify the article, state the action and rationale, and identify the issuing party. Retracted content should normally remain available with clear labeling to preserve the scholarly record, unless exceptional legal or safety considerations require removal; any removal should be transparently explained as far as possible.

12. Intellectual property, licensing, and publication charges

Authors shall respect copyright and third-party rights and obtain permissions for material not covered by appropriate exceptions or licenses. The journal shall clearly state on its website the copyright ownership arrangements, the exact license applied to articles, permitted reuse, and any repository or preprint policies. The journal shall transparently disclose all article processing charges, submission charges, waiver arrangements, or the absence of fees before submission. Editorial consideration and acceptance must not depend on an author's capacity to pay.

13. Use of artificial intelligence and automated tools

AI systems may assist with language editing, searching, coding, or analysis, but must not be named as authors and cannot assume responsibility for the manuscript. Authors remain accountable for factual accuracy, originality, confidentiality, references, and disclosure of material AI assistance in accordance with journal instructions. Routine spelling and grammar correction may be treated differently from substantive generation or analysis under a separately published AI-use policy.

Editors and reviewers shall not submit confidential manuscripts, participant data, or unpublished findings to externally operated AI tools unless expressly permitted under journal policy, consistent with applicable data-protection obligations and confidentiality agreements. Automated tools may support, but shall not replace, accountable editorial judgment.

14. Journal governance and policy implementation

The publisher and editorial leadership shall ensure the journal has a publicly identifiable editorial board, clear roles, accessible contact information, transparent publication policies, an independent editorial decision process, and suitable procedures for managing records, complaints, corrections, and reviewer/editor training. Policies shall be reviewed periodically to reflect changes in research practices, technology, COPE guidance, and applicable law.

This policy should be read together with the journal's current author guidelines, peer-review policy, data and privacy policies, copyright and licensing terms, and information on fees. If any page conflicts with this statement, the editorial office shall clarify and resolve the inconsistency transparently.

Official guidance used in preparing this proposed policy

• COPE. Core Practices. https://publicationethics.org/core-practices

• COPE. Ethics toolkit for a successful editorial office. https://members.publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/cope-ethics-toolkit-journal-editors-publishers.pdf

• COPE Council. Retraction guidelines (Version 2, November 2019). https://doi.org/10.24318/cope.2019.1.4

• COPE. Ethical guidelines for peer reviewers. https://members.publicationethics.org/sites/default/files/cope-ethical-guidelines-peer-reviewers-v2_0.pdf

• COPE Council. Author fees and waivers (2025). https://doi.org/10.24318/CkhGNJ8Q